The New Sheriff in Town

My friend Ken stopped by this morning to visit. I noticed his white 4WD truck parked at the lab when I got back from turning on the baypump. Ken works for the National Marine Fisheries Service as an agent, and he's the new sheriff in town. We became friends last winter during the Christmas freeze when green sea turtles stranded on the shoreline like so many lawn ornaments, and we ended up having to babysit about 18 of them.

The Corps of Engineers in its infinite wisdom was opearting a dredge at the time in Brazos Santiago Pass, under the rationale that they would do less damage to emergent seagrass beds during the winter. Never mind the fact that our reptile friends are lethargic and much more prone to being sucked up in the dredge intake, to be belched out on the beach along with tons of muddy dredge spoil in a process called "beach replinishment".

Beach replenishment is a scam that the city of South Padre Island came up with along with the Corps of Engineers to deal with the tons of unwanted dredge disposal material, mostly bottom muck and mud. This spoil is always a problem whenever a dredging project is undertaken, and our one pass between the Port and the open Gulf, the Brazos Santiago Pass is no exception. Although the Brazos Santiago is a natural pass, or cut in the island, it requires periodic dredging to maintain an average depth of around 35 feet which allows large vessels access to the Port of Brownsville. So every two years a massive project is undertaken to accomplish this. The City contracts the Corps of Engineers to pump the freshly excavated mud on the beaches in the hope that this will slow the erosion caused by natural and man made process, things like knocking down the primary dune field in order to build condominiums and hotels. They pay the Corps something like a million dollars each time they pump their otherwise unwanted spoil on the beach. I suspect somebody, or a group of somebodies much higher up is profiting from this exercise in futility, but I'll refrain from speculating, or the Eye of the Hurricane and its author could very well disappear from the planet.

For a little while though, the beach appears wider, although much muddier, and I guess the throngs of vacationing winter Texan tourists thoroughly appreciate this effort to save our beach. Because the dredge spoil consists of mostly mud sediments, natural erosion in the form of the longshore current quickly picks it up and carries it northbound to be eventually deposited along the coastal eolian sandplain, replenishing miles and miles of deserted and unspoiled beach, shoreline and inland potrero in a process thoroughly appreciated by vacationing whitetailed deer, coyote, rattlesnake and Santa Gertrudis cattle.

So I met Ken when the dredge rudely deposited a turtle on the beach during that cold period, and he caught wind of it. Of course the dredge operator denied that this happened, but was more than a little embarassed when Ken went to talk with them on the beach, and right then as they were talking, the dredge outlet spewed another fricasseed tortuga verde on the beach. Although caught apparently red handed, the upper echelon of the NMFS failed to successfully prosecute the dredge operator. That's the way it is, one arm of the government rarely polices another. It's all on the wink and nod system.

I know that frustrates the hell out of Ken. Of all of the feds that I've known, he seems to be one of the rare ones who understand the long term consequences of greed. Whether it's overfishing or consumer fraud, Ken goes after them like a bulldog. He's the new sheriff in town.

One of the new sheriffs latest frustrations is with wholesalers who are dumping a species of Atlantic fish that are commonly called redfish. Completely unrelated to our own redfish (red drum), this species of ocean perch is inferior in quality and size to our own native fish, but since one of the vernacular names is redfish, these unscrupulous marketers are selling it under that moniker, at a substantially lower price than true redfish. The restaurants buy it at a lower cost, and sell it to the consumer in the form of "blackened redfish", charging the same price they would if they sold the real thing. The irony is that just about anything tastes good blackened. You could blacken the sole of an old shoe and it'd probably be allright, maybe a little tough though. So although not illegal, it is nevertheless, unscrupulous, and I'm sure if the consumer knew what was going on he'd be pretty pissed. Of course to do anything about it would take a hefty effort on the part of the NMFS legal staff, and they're unwilling to make that effort as long as thing remain status quo. They told him though, if it generated a lot of publicity (the squeeky wheel kind of thing), they might be more inclined to react.

I just talked to the new Sheriff on the phone, and we're going to get together and sit on the back deck of Le Menagerie, drink a few beers, eat some fried chicken and watch people try and trailer their boats after a long day of drinking and fishing on the Laguna Madre. Should be fun. Last time I enjoyed that form of entertainment, somebody ripped the axle off of their trailer when they backed too far down into the water.